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Animals aren’t people

From
Alexander Moseley

Gary Francione’s logic of providing animals with one right – not to be treated as the property of humans – may seem like a compromising strategy designed to avoid the absurdity of giving animals human rights while still offering them a dignity worthy of moral personhood (8 October, p 24). Yet despite his quasi-scientific rhetoric, it is a deeply flawed argument.

Firstly, property rights over animals provide humanity with a means of ensuring their use in serving our needs – needs that Francione describes as “often trivial”, but food, clothing and enjoyment cannot be so lightly dismissed.

Secondly, wild animals that are not the acknowledged property of people are precisely those that are open to exploitation and potential extinction. For a professor of law not to understand the role and effect of property rights in this respect is rather disconcerting.

Like many animal rights theorists, Francione seeks to confuse our thinking by asserting the equality of animal and human slavery. That this is assuredly a denigration of humanity may be put aside in favour of the more damning criticism that he asks us to deny what animals are. They are not self-creating beings capable of realising what they are and what they ought to be, they are not rational (reasoning) creatures, and their relations to one another and to us are not personal but animal.

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While we may admit “higher” animals into our own personal sphere of love and consideration, a gulf exists between us and the animal kingdom that only wishful thinking and fantasy can remove.

From Trevor Magnusson

If, as Francione suggests, animals are to be considered within the “scope of our moral community”, then carnivores of all species represent a serious problem. We find we must apply one set of guidelines when evaluating our own behaviour, and another for the behaviour of animals. In other words, we must make a fundamental moral distinction between humans and animals. But that distinction is at the very root of what animal rights advocates are opposing.

Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

From Brian Clegg

Presumably Francione believes that a fox has the right to eat a rabbit. So he appears to be arguing that we should have fewer rights than a wild animal. That doesn’t seem…right.

Upper Wanborough, Wiltshire, UK

From Chris Barnard, University of Nottingham and Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour

Francione states that animals should have the right not to be treated as property by humans. We can certainly make a moral case against the selfish exploitation of other animals, but we also have to acknowledge that our skewed “power relationship” with them inflicts damage in other ways, not just where we choose to exploit them for our own gain. Paradoxically, doing something about this depends on the kind of relationship that Francione finds offensive continuing to be exercised, at least for the foreseeable future.

It is inevitable that we will continue to impose on other species, and that some of our attempts to reduce our impact, including captive-breeding programmes, welfare research and the like, will impose on them still further. But since the alternative is to rely on subjective guesswork for solutions, a vigorous culture of animal research is both scientifically pressing and has the moral potency to counter opposition without self-serving appeals to improvement in our own quality of life.

To persist in the dubious language of “rights”, one can argue, like Francione, that other animals have a “right” not to be enslaved by us, but one can argue with equal foundation that they have a “right” to some amelioration of the collateral damage inflicted by our escalating global domination. As we are the only ones who can offer such amelioration, we had better make sure we get it right.

Nottingham, UK

From Michael Morris

Francione makes a lot of sense when arguing that animals deserve legal personhood. It is therefore disconcerting that he continues the tradition of many in the animal liberation movement of basing his argument on evolutionary considerations, and taking sideswipes at those with opinions of origins that differ from the mainstream, such as his comment about “religious superstition”.

Our obligation to treat animals as legal persons stems from the moral principle that sentient creatures should be treated equally regardless of species. The conclusion that animals are sentient has empirical grounds — from observations and experiments on animal behaviour, and it has no connection with any theory of origins, Darwinian or not.

The independence of animal liberationism and any theory of origin is not just of academic interest but has political implications for the animal rights movement as a whole. Alienating or sneering at potential allies with unconventional ideas makes no sense when we consider the immensely powerful industrial interests that oppose us.